Broken Away
by Galatyn Renner
Summary: It's a party!" indeed. Certain attendees weren't having such a good time... A Siroc one-shot Rub-A-Dub Sub gap-filler backstory for 'Someone Serious' (PAX's Young Blades)


Broken Away

By Siroc

A Siroc one-shot/ Rub-A-Dub Sub gap-filler

Author's note/Disclaimer: The characters and circumstances portrayed in Young Blades do not belong to me. This plot and this back story, which ties into my longer work, 'Someone Serious,' do, however. A pistole was worth about four dollars.

s-i-r-o-c

The voice was cultured, aristocratic, and even after three years it caused a spill of fear to pool in my stomach. I recognized it instantly. "Here they are, Your Majesty, the vaunted Musketeers, nothing more than common thieves preying upon your honest subjects."

I was glad that, crouched behind the bulk of the sub-aquatic chamber, I could not see his smirking face, for I certainly would have thrown myself at him, shouting, "And what have you done to those same honest subjects, Your Eminence? How many years have you preyed upon the people of France, myself and those of my faith among them?"

Feeling me tense beside him, Ramon reached over and laid a hand on my shoulder, whether for comfort or caution I could not tell. I shrugged it off, shaking with icy rage, barely hearing d'Artagnan and Jacques deny the accusations to the king.

"Mazarin, you said you had proof! Show it to me," Louis demanded.

'Oh, the proof I could show you, Your Majesty, though it would damn me as well.'

"Yes, it is my sad duty to do so, Your Majesty. Uncover that cargo now!" Captain Duval seemed to take this order as our cue to turn the tables on the Cardinal, because he sprang up, dragging Ramon with him. Ramon dragged me. Jaw set, I stared resolutely to the left of the red-cloaked figure that had haunted my nightmares for seven years, and let the Captain do the talking, praying he would not credit me with the invention.

The Cardinal masked his surprise well, both at this change in his plan and at my appearance, as Captain Duval presented the sub-aquatic chamber to the king. I turned away to help uncover it, and was surprised to see in Jacques' eyes a look of hatred at least as dire as mine. Could he bear an equal grudge against Mazarin?

Louis' usually vapid face screwed up in a frown of puzzlement. Fixing a look of earnest, hearty commiseration on my own, I explained, "That means it goes underwater, Your Majesty," cringing inwardly.

Captain Duval, used to catering to Louis, continued my explanation: "Really! Private Siroc invented it." I closed my eyes for a moment in abject and utter dismay, so I wouldn't have to see the triumphant smile that surely danced on Mazarin's lips. We had foiled his plan to discredit the Musketeers, but he had found me and he knew my name, the one I had taken upon entering the corps, not the one mother had given me and he had tainted with speaking.

"And you thought your Musketeers were thieves, Your Majesty," he said, knowing that I, at least, was. Did he wonder what I had done with his two thousand pistoles, taken as payment for four years of slavery, for my family's lives, when the time and means had come for me to run? He could not guess, surely, that some of it had gone to build the machine I stood beside, that the rest was invested in a laboratory even more advanced than the one he had given me, this one dedicated to his downfall. "What a well-played surprise, don't you think?"

Outraged, I stared at the man. Could he possibly imagine that Louis would fall for this deft reversal of position? Turning, I found similar expressions on my companions' faces. Only d'Artagnan, on the bank, could grin. I thought for a moment that he was going to call Mazarin's bluff, but Louis had taken the bait.

"Oh, I love the surprise! Well done, everyone!" he gushed, clapping. "May I, um, look inside?"

Captain Duval attempted to head him off. "Your Majesty, perhaps it would be better…tomorrow?"

Mazarin took this as practically an admission of guilt, so he immediately wanted to see what we didn't want anyone to. I took perverse pleasure in opening the hatch and allowing the foul odor of Ramon's cheese to assault everyone's nostrils.

Louis sniffed the air delicately. "Is that Val-de-Bleu? I simply love Val-de-Bleu!"

Ramon lit up at meeting another gourmand. "As do I, Your Majesty!" Mazarin had succeeded in deflecting all attention from his elaborate scheme. Louis was now going on about mollusks and parties, motioning us all onto the bank.

Ramon went first, offering the king some of his cheese, followed by Captain Duval. Looking after them, Jacques shot me a look that said quite plainly that it was fine here, thank you, and he had no plans to budge. I nodded.

We should have reckoned on Giulio Mazarin. Detaching himself from the budding soiree, he strolled close to the water, saying in a loud voice directed between d'Artagnan and Captain Duval, "I should like to meet the inventor of this…contraption." He waved a languid hand at the sub-aquatic chamber. "I have some interest in science myself." A masterpiece of understatement, if what the Cardinal practiced could be called science.

Backs to him, my Captain and my oldest friend in the Musketeers, two men who between them knew perhaps half my truth, gave me helpless looks. The red fox had invited me for a walk in the Dark Wood; it would be the soul of rudeness to refuse. I drew in a deep, slow breath and let it out, to compose myself, knowing what the Cardinal could do to the self of a man, trying in a moment to throw up defenses three years of friendship and acceptance had slowly broken open.

A touch on my arm, and I turned to see Jacques, a question in his eyes: he knew something was going on, but not what. He cut his eyes toward the bank.

I shook my head. "Stay here." The moral support another could provide me in the Cardinal's presence would be negligible, and if I could save that other that presence, I would.

Under the pretense of helping me off the barge, d'Artagnan hissed, "Five minutes." Grateful, I nodded, and went to meet the Cardinal.

While in earshot of the others, he questioned me about the chamber, the number of propellers, the gear workings, and other prosaic minutiae. As if he could not have guessed upon first seeing the machine.

As we walked farther from the picnic, though, he said, in a way meant to be companionable, "So you are Siroc, now?"

I did not answer. Here, with this man, I had only my speech-or silence- for defense.

He went on; my words were not necessary for conversation. "It is a change from Mathieu, I will admit, but it suits you. Siroc." He tasted the name.

Fighting the urge to change it again, to something that he did not think suited me, I remained silent, knowing that if I spoke I would say far more than was wise. "Well, my desert wind, you have blown far from me, who made you what you are. Is that gratitude?"

"It is not." I weighed each word carefully, a skill I had forgotten, so long away from him. "And if you made me what I am, I would rather be what I was."

He turned on me with a rustle of red silk, and I flinched in spite of myself. "Ungrateful whelp. Do you think your precious captain would have let you into the Musketeers if I had not beaten the use of a sword into your head? Could you have built that-" he pointed to the sub-aquatic chamber- "without my tutelage?"

Something my father used to say came to me from out of my bones. "You can't put in what God left out."

I thought he would hit me then, but he only shook his head. "Still the little idealist. You will find," he purred, gripping my arm, "that it is possible to take out what God has put in."

He let go, walked a little way, and faced me. "Return to me, and I will give you whatever you wish, whatever you need. A laboratory, a captaincy in my Guard, a title, absolution for your family's heresy, name it."

But I knew what he would ask in return, and wondered if he honestly expected me to accept. "And if I asked for the obelisk back?" 'And my father's books.'

His eyes lit with a fire like the flames of hell. "Ah, then we could decipher them together, learning the secrets of the ancients. Such inventions you might build!"

Such inventions indeed. Once I had given him the key to the code, he would have no further use for me, save one. Save one only, and for that he could find others less…troublesome. And mine would be a living death, long or short, in the dungeons or one of his experiments. "I will not," I said quietly. "They would not be mine. And I will not be yours."

And I believe it took more courage to turn my back on him that day and walk back to my friends than I had ever found inside myself before, though I knew that when next I encountered the Cardinal one of us would walk from the meeting and one would be carried.

D'Artagnan was waiting for me, knowledge in his eyes, and pity, and another nameless thing.

Lifting my face to the sky, I gave praise.


End file.
